Massive police raids in Twin Cities

Even though the DNC protests in Denver were undersized and essentially harmless, protesters in the Twin Cities planning similar protests at the RNC next week have, in the last 24 hours, been subjected to a series of appalling police raids and arrests. Journalists and lawyers present have also been detained, computers and other personal belongings seized — and all without a single illegal act being committed (by the protesters, anyway).

Protestors here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed, and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying….

Additional reports are emerging of numerous other actions, including the ludicrous detention of a permaculture bus.

Greenwald’s phrase, “suspected protesters,” says it all: protest, by definition, is being considered illegal. This is the culmination of a tactic that’s been used with increasing frequency in recent years, though never on this scale: the blatantly illegal intimidation and arrest of people planning perfectly legal demonstrations, on the theory that the inevitable lawsuits and awards are simply part of the unlimited budget being given to local law enforcement in these types of major events in order to suppress dissent.

These, quite simply, are the acts of a police state. And they should inspire everyone to be less, not more, silent.

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Gee, if I was a conservative this police state-fascist activity would really piss me off. But I’m a Republican, and I say fuck the constitution. Illegal wars, torture, stolen elections, evisceration of the first and fourth amendments-it’s all good for us Republicans.

“A copy of a warrant at one house said the police were authorized to look for a laundry list of items, including fire bombs, Molotov cocktails, brake fluid, photographs and maps of St. Paul, paint, computers and camera equipment, and documents and other communications.”

Yeah, those cameras might be used to document unlawful acts by the police.

Minneapolis mayor “R.T. Rybak was the first mayor in the nation to endorse the presidential campaign of Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Mayor Rybak campaigns on Obama’s behalf, being active in the youth wing of the campaign.”

Yup, he is a Democrat. A DEMOCRAT is the mayor of this fascist city, and the mayor runs the police department!

First, these raids are taking place in St Paul, not Minneapolis. Second, if you had followed the links and read the various reports, you’d find out that these raids have been coordinated by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office, Bob Fletcher, who is very much a Republican.

@ 11

Given your inability to dig up remotely relevant facts, “Village Idiot” works just fine.

The real question is, these guys had warrants (well, except for one case where they showed up without a warrant and everyone was standing around waiting for the warrant to arrive). Warrants require sufficient evidence to support probable cause, and it seems rather apparent that someone, somewhere, provided very false evidence to support these warrants. Wanna bet no one ever gets prosecuted for it?

According to a report in the Star Tribune the cops had spies in the activist groups.

“Aided by informants planted in protest groups, authorities raided at least six buildings across St. Paul and Minneapolis to stop an “anarchist” plan to disrupt this week’s Republican National Convention.”

“Ramsey County authorities conducted raids across Minneapolis and St. Paul Friday and Saturday as a pre-emptive strike against disruptive protests of the Republican National Convention.

“Five people were arrested and more than 100 were handcuffed, questioned and released by scores of deputies and police officers, according to police and elected officials familiar with the raids. …

” … [T]he raids drew immediate condemnation from … St. Paul City Councilman Dave Thune …. ‘This is not the way to start things off,’ Thune said Saturday morning. ‘ … Regardless of how you feel about these people … they had a right to be there.’

“Three people were arrested and detained for probable cause conspiracy to commit a riot following a raid … in Minneapolis. Ten other people in the house were processed and released after about 90 minutes, said Bruce Nestor of the National Lawyers Guild. … Nestor said he has not seen documents that support a reason for searching any of the locations, but that the warrant, signed by a judge on Friday, seeks multiple items, including electronics and MP3 players, … communication between RNC Welcoming Committee members, urine and feces. …

“Nestor said the conspiracy to commit a riot charges are vague. ‘This is a charge that police use for preventive detention,’ he said. ‘It … borders on criminalizing political advocacy.'”

(Quoted under fair use.)

Roger Rabbit Commentary: The cops want urine and feces? Why didn’t they say so! My friends and I can supply them with all the urine and feces they can process!! We can get at least 100 tons from Woodland Park Zoo and another 10 or 20 tons from the rabbits in Green Lake Park! If we do a city-wide piss-and-shit drive and get all the dogs and cats to kick in (so to speak), I’ll bet we could fill several 747s with the stuff! If they let me know where they want it delivered, we’ll rain the stuff from the skies! Shock and awe!!!

“A copy of a warrant at one house said the police were authorized to look for a laundry list of items, including fire bombs, Molotov cocktails, brake fluid, photographs and maps of St. Paul, paint, computers and camera equipment, and documents and other communications.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve got a camera, some brake fluid, computer (duh) and a map of St. Paul at my place.

I wonder if these “protesters” were some of the same scum that our city saw back during the WTO riots? I say shoot ’em. Many of the WTO protesters were anti-American. A good chunk of them tried to prevent people from going to their meetings. They tried to prevent people the freedom to gather and to speak! They even broke a Nike store front window! If these is the same anarchists/terrorists – the same ilk – shoot them in the head!

CBS Outdoor, a billboard company, canceled a contract it signed Aug. 5 with the Soldier Billboard Project, which planned to display images of the faces of American soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company explained the cancellation by calling the images “confusing” and “inappropriate.”

A city architectural board denied a permit to a group called True Blue Minnesota for an outdoor video billboard displaying an anti-war message. The billboard may go up anyway because a judge has stayed the board’s action.

Whelan says his roommate, Erin Stalmaker, went out to talk to talk to the police. She asked the officers why they were there. The officers asked why people were running away from them. Erin reportedly told the officers that their drawn automatic weapons probably had something to do with it. She was detained after asking to see a warrant.

“Are you scared,” I asked.”

“No, I’m a veteran,” he said, “I was in the army. I was a military police officer. I wouldn’t have done this.”

Whelan said it was especially perplexing that the police would target his home.

“There’s nothing here,” he said, “These are the “checking” people. They’re not even going to be in the demonstration. Some are lawyers.

@33 I was working on the convention center expansion project and got a few days off. Not much love here for Oregon’s anarchists, though. People who shit on the floor where they live strike me as rather odd. Certainly not the type I’d care to visit for tea and crumpets.

I met a few of the Oregon anarchists while living in Olympia around the time of the riots. I wasn’t impressed. Loser and whack jobs that grabbed onto a political label so they could tell the world that they’re oppressed and not really just losers and whack jobs.

And Troll, you fucking wingnuts are so fucking stupid you don’t realize how fucking stupid you are. You support a Republican party that is the antithesis to what real conservatism is and yet actually believe yourselves to be conservatives.

To support George W. Bush and the Republican party as it is today is to betray your country. I’m no fan of the Democrats but at this time in history they’re the only viable alternative to the Republican Party.

I’ll be voting against four more years of Bush. I’ll be voting against John McCain.

You need to get out of your mom’s basement. If you ever had kids (damn unlikely in your case, you being autosexual and all), you know Down’s syndrome is, unfortunately, very common in children from women over 35. Almost never happens to young women.

Wishful thinking on the part of some Koskid with more typing skills than brains.

Then you would have noticed that I also typed in that I hope it is untrue. I hope you guys keep your little pot smoking, socialist leaning, cop hating, feminazi as VP candidate.

And I am not in my mom’s basement. I am in your mother in laws basement, waiting for your wife to drop by so I can get the $200 she pays me for the bukake session. Believe me, two bags ain’t enough when your wife’s involved.

And 3% is not “very common”. BTW, genius, there is no such thing as “very common”. It is either common, or uncommon. Learn to use the language we have all agreed to, dumbshit.

I’d seen reports of this as well, and viewed the whole thing with a bit of skepticism myself. However, the facts recounted here don’t seem to be in dispute.

I asked my wife who has given birth to three children, in all three cases her water broke, if it were possible for a woman’s water to break and for her to give a speech, take an 8 hour plane ride and then drive another hour (past a more advanced facility) to her local hospital and give birth. She said that it’s possible, but highly improbable.

When I told my wife that this was the woman’s fifth child, her immediate response was, “No way!”

When I told my wife that the woman was Sarah Palin, she said, “That woman is a first class idiot.”

So, either, Sarah Palin put her career ahead of the health and well-being of her child in a highly reckless way, or the baby wasn’t hers. Take your pick, but those are the only two possibilities here.

Man I thought these tactics would start in late September or early October by you commies. Not only are we on course to take POTUS but I think we got a good shot to take back the Senate. hehehehehe I love it.

AGAIN Troll is just too fucking stupid. Don’t you even want to convince one person you’re a Democrat Trollbitch? You have stopped even denying that you’re really a right wing turd. Change your name to proud republican. That’s what you are. Be honest. Again I ask you – do you teach your kids to lie like this?

And trust me – I’ll be here long after you and your “watch” and everywhere you post, I’ll point out you’re nothing but a lying republican cunt.

“WASHINGTON – Congress is putting the … future of renewable energy … in jeopardy even as the presidential candidates … hail windmills, solar panels and biofuels as long-term solutions to high gasoline prices and global warming.

“Some $500 million in investment and production tax credits will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress renews them. Without that help, solar and wind power companies say they will reverse planned expansions and, in many cases, cut payrolls and capital investment. …

“The Solar Energy Industries Association says some 20 utility-scale solar power plants, many in California and together capable of producing power for a million homes, are at risk ….

“Greg Wetstone of the American Wind Energy Association says his group is predicting a loss of 76,000 jobs and $11.4 billion in investment if Congress allows its production tax credit to expire. …

“Congress let the credit expire in 2000, 2002 and 2004. In those three years, wind capacity installation dropped 93 percent, 73 percent and 77 percent, respectively, from the previous year.

“Navigant Consulting, which advises on renewable energy technology, estimated that investments in wind and solar power in 2009 would amount to $26.6 billion with the credits; that would fall to $7 billion without them.

“‘These companies are shutting down projects, firing people and it’s Congress’s fault,’ said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“Almost all the provisions are popular. But Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of tax-extender plans ….

“One repercussion, said Monica McGuire, executive secretary of the R&D Credit Coalition, is that more companies are taking their research dollars overseas. ‘It’s a global race for R&D dollars,’ she said, and the odds are not good when at least 20 developed nations offer tax incentives and the United States currently has nothing.”

(Quoted from Associated Press under fair use.)

Roger Rabbit Commentary: Did you notice that Republicans controlled Congress in 2000, 2002, and 2004? And that Republicans are blocking the current bill?

When the candidates talk about energy and foreign dependency this election season, remember who’s keeping us dependent of expensive foreign oil and sending tens of thousands of jobs to foreign countries:

Of course you do! And you probably also think the smiling veterinarian wearing the rubber gloves and tapping the syringe is your best friend! Because you’re a stupid dog.

Here are the facts:

The G.O.P./Biaw party has twice as many Senate seats up for re-election as the Democrats. Six or seven G.O.P./Biaw senators are retiring, creating vacant seats up for grabs, versus none for Democrats. And polls show at least half a dozen G.O.P./Biaw seats are highly vulnerable, versus only one possibly vulnerable Democratic seat. No one, not even leading Republican spokespeople, believes the G.O.P./Biaw party will win the Senate this year.

And when you get that shot in the ass, dog, it’s gonna be lights out. I can hardly wait.

I’m getting tired of constantly re-explaining the same simple things to Republicans, trolls, dogs, and other inanimate objects with no ability to learn. It’s like trying to teach a brick wall how to think. Some things are impossible.

So now it comes out that Palin boarded an 8-hour airline flight after her water broke without telling the airline. If I were a passenger on a plane that had to divert and land because of a passenger like that, I’d be damned pissed. Can you say “selfish and inconsiderate?” In fact, I think I’d sue her sorry ass.

@56 I think they do it for money — $5.15 an hour, to be exact. Or maybe they’re paid by the word to get around minimum wage laws. Republicans don’t like paying minimum wage. They think $1.25 a day is a fair wage.

@67 That’s not really a big deal. Many Republicans, especially in southern states, are great-grandparents at her age. If they got married at 13, and their kids got married at 13, and their grandkids got married at 13, and they were all shotgun weddings …

“Washington State Republicans Seek Distance From McCain, National Party

“By David Postman “Seattle Times chief political reporter

“Dino Rossi, Republican candidate for governor, doesn’t see himself as even sharing a ticket with presidential candidate John McCain. ‘We’re not all that connected with’ McCain, Rossi said.

“John McCain will be nominated this week as the Republican candidate for president. He likely will ride effortlessly through the party’s national convention in St. Paul, Minn. But in Washington state, McCain will share the ballot this fall with Republicans trying to distance themselves from the national party and doing little to link arms with the McCain campaign.

“Dino Rossi, a Republican who lists his party preference as ‘GOP Party,’ is doing his best to bask in Barack Obama’s message of change ….

“Rossi talks so much about Obama on the campaign trail, you could be forgiven for thinking they share a ticket. He doesn’t mention McCain in his stump speech.

“Some state Republicans don’t want their fortunes tied to a national party beset by President Bush’s unpopularity, a faltering economy and Republican corruption scandals on Capitol Hill.

“The brand is so beaten down that Spokane County Republican Chairman Curtis Fackler listed no party preference for his Aug. 19 primary run for insurance commissioner. … Fackler told Fox News that ‘we want to get around’ the fact that 30 percent of the state’s voters will vote against a Republican ‘no matter what.’

” … Rossi … doesn’t see himself as even sharing a ticket with McCain. ‘The ticket part starts with where I am and goes down to where all the legislative candidates are,’ Rossi said. He said ‘we’re not all that connected with’ Bush, McCain or congressional Republicans. ‘We do our own thing, and it is very separate and very distinct and the issues are very different. I don’t have anything to do with world peace.'”

(Quoted under fair use.)

Roger Rabbit Commentary: “I don’t have anything to do with world peace,” Rossi says. No kidding! Neither does his entire party. No wonder Rossi wants to deceive voters into thinking he’s on Obama’s ticket. He lies about everything else, too.

I saw the St. Paul police chief Harrington on C-SPAN this morning talking about the arrests and the raids, offering talking points about protecting the lawful protesters (and their First Amendment rights) by arresting people in their homes for conspiracy to possibly do future acts with bricks, bottles, and other objects that have otherwise benign/lawful uses.

He didn’t talk about the Elian Gonzalez style break-ins, with the use of riot gear and military style weapons, the handcuffing of kids for interrogation. Remember how many charges against protesters at RNC 04 were ultimately dropped (after the convention)?

I have the feeling that this will backfire for Ramsey County. These actions put a face on the enemy for the anarchists and others who would love to express themselves in anti-social and destructive ways. It’s grist for the mill. We’ll see.

“ST. PAUL, Minn. (Aug. 31) – John McCain says Republicans will alter the national convention that was to be a four-day celebration of his presidential nomination …. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and prominent GOP governors decided to skip the gathering altogether.”

(Quoted under fair use.)

Roger Rabbit Commentary: Looks like the only people who plan to attend the GOP Nuremberg Rally are cops and protesters. Man, that GOP brand is poison.

There were additional raids that aren’t garnering as much media attention but are even more foreboding. One raid targeted a home that was housing members of New York based I-Witness which is a group that monitors police activities and who was responsible for exposing misconduct and cases of perjury that resulted in the overturning of at least 400 arrests during the 2004 RNC convention.

Additionally, police arrested other members of I-Witness and a local police brutality group Communities United Against Police Brutality at various locations, including while merely riding bikes on the street. Also, while the members of the local anti-brutality group were detained their garage was broken into but, while nothing was stolen, their documentation of police abuses were apparently ransacked. However, no warrants were disclosed for any search on that property.

Apparently, the police don’t want anyone watching how they respond to any protests at the convention.

@75: Well, I don’t think St. Paul will ever be a contender for the Winter Olympics anyway. They would need to ship a few hundred thousand tons of taconite tailings down from the Iron Range to Afton Alps and build the runs to Olympic size.

St. Paul was always the pretty, sleepy (next to high fallutin’ Minneapolis next door) thoroughly Midwestern burgh that happened to be the state capital. Now the RNC has turned it into the next American police state experiment.

Sounds like she could be a liberal. What a great pick for veep. Shame obama was afraid of a strong woman as veep, instead he picked someone from the old boys club to join him. Change you can believe in.

And I am not in my mom’s basement. I am in your mother in laws basement, waiting for your wife to drop by so I can get the $200 she pays me for the bukake session. Believe me, two bags ain’t enough when your wife’s involved.

There’s about 18 billion barrels of domestic offshore oil and another 6 to 8 billion barrels in ANWR, or about 26 to 28 billion barrels total. If we do drill for this oil, it will be expensive to extract and take 10 to 20 years to reach the market because of infrastructure that must be built.

But let’s pretend this oil is readily available. The U.S. consumes about 7 billion barrels a year. So, that’s a 4-year supply or less — enough only for McCain’s first term.

Then what? After it’s gone, what happens next, if the U.S. has done nothing to develop alternative energy technologies?

We’ll be screwed, that’s what.

But McCain doesn’t care. In other words, he’s a short-sighted panderer who only cares about winning the election. He doesn’t give a shit what happens after that. The same cynical pandering to the GOP voter base that led him to embrace Jerry Falwell and choose a city councilwoman from a small Alaskan village as his running carries over into his energy “policy.”

If all went according to script, he’d get some help from Big Oil, in the form of lower gas prices between now and the election (say, $2.50 a gallon). By next year, you’d be paying $5 or $6 for gas, but they’re hoping voters won’t figure that out. They usually don’t.

Trouble is, a tight global market and Hurricane Gustav may not cooperate. Even Big Oil can’t sell gas it doesn’t have. The Gulf hurricane, now growing into a monster “storm of the century,” has already shut down 80% of Gulf oil production. Don’t be surprised if Bush tries to save McCain’s bacon by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Bush, McCain, and the Republicans are hoping voters won’t remember that just 2 months ago Bush refused to stop filling the SPR at a rate of 100,000 bpd even though U.S. government purchases of oil for the SPR aggravated the supply crunch and helped drive crude prices to all-time highs.

Is there anything about these Republicans that isn’t Machiellian, mean-spirited, and dishonest?

@83 Marvin, after the election our party will be too busy to pay attention to the Republicans crying in the corner of the room. We’ll have plenty of sweeping up to do. You guys broke an awful lot of china.

A growing economy requires energy supply growth. The sunlight falling on planet earth in one day contains more energy than all the oil the planet ever had. If we remain shackled to the world’s finite and shrinking petroleum reserves we’ll continue to ship our jobs and money abroad ad infinitum. The sheer stupidity of this is plain for everyone except stupid Republicans to see.

Live for today and have no tomorrow. That’s the GOP creed. They would bankrupt our future for small increments of short-term gain.

The thing is, Marvin, expanding domestic energy sources will take 10 to 20 years no matter what we do. So we might as well do it right, dumbass. But that’s apparently too complicated a concept for your puny mind to grasp.

Ramsey County Sherriff Bob Fletcher read from a statement this morning, describing the RNC Welcoming Committee as “a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists who are intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention.

Fletcher’s statement also included a list of items found in the searches, including PVC pipe, chicken wire and duct tape – believed by police to be intended for locking protesters together in human barricades called “sleeping dragons” – five-gallon buckets of urine, throwing knives, flammable liquids, homemade caltrops (devices used to puncture tires, presumably bus tires), bolt cutters, sledgehammers, protective padding, and plastic buckets cut into shields.

A video claiming to advertise for the RNC Welcoming Committee’s upcoming protests was posted on YouTube, showing a masked female running through streets to the lyrics, “One way or another, I’m gonna find ya, I’m gonna getcha,” and distributing riot gear and homemade bombs from materials such as those found in last night’s raids.

Both the video page and the group’s website link to another group’s stated plan for disrupting the RNC, which includes establishing blockades around St. Paul’s Excel Center (where the convention is to take place), immobilizing delegates’ buses and blocking the bridges that connect Minneapolis to St. Paul.

“Those plugging into this strategy,” the plan states, “will be free to shape their actions as they see fit, using the tactics they consider appropriate.”

The Pioneer Press reports that the five people being held in jail are under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to riot, conspiracy to commit civil disorder and conspiracy to damage property and that the St. Paul building that the RNC Welcoming Committee was leasing, found following the raid to be in violation of fire code, has since been turned back over to the property owner.

Do you kiss your whore mother/wife/daughter/buttfucker with those lying lips, you miserable piece of shit fucker?

Oh my Gawd! I have some rubbing alcohol in my bathroom. Isn’t that stuff flamable? And I have matches in the kitchen. If I put those two items together on a table with a map of Minnesota am I a terrorist? What if I also have airline tickets to St Paul?

“Homes of college-aid protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from people’s homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.”

This is Eileen Clancy . . . The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.

We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross intimidation by police officers, and the detention of media activists and reporters.

91. Roger Rabbit spews: The thing is, Marvin, expanding domestic energy sources will take 10 to 20 years no matter what we do. So we might as well do it right, dumbass. But that’s apparently too complicated a concept for your puny mind to grasp.

I believe in doing it all. Wind, solar, tide and oil.

Is the plane that obama flies around in solar powered? What, another 10-20 years before that happens?

Marvin, for the love of Gawd, shut the fuck up! If not for Gawd, if not for other people then do it for yourself.

Go back and read your comments over, say, the past three days. If those comments ring true to you. If you can’t see what a pathetic ignorant fucking wingnut you are, then seek help Marvin, for your own good, seek hep!

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